It's always worthwhile to encourage recycling.

The city this year hired a Helena firm, Anderson-Montgomery Engineering Consultants, to take a look at what the city has in place in terms of recycling and what improvements might be possible.

The city commission took an initial look at the consultant's report during a meeting last week.

One thread that ran through what the consultants told the city was that some new spending would be necessary in order to do a significantly better job of recycling.

One-tenth of the waste gathered at Helena's transfer station is diverted and recycled.

The consultants suggested ways to increase that figure, among them subscription-based curbside pickup; adding an electronic-waste storage site at the transfer station; and adding three new collection sites.

There are now collection sites for newspaper, magazines, aluminum cans and foil, tin and steel cans and corrugated cardboard at Safeway, Wal-Mart and Kmart.

Those same materials are collected at the transfer station, along with glass, tires, motor oil and antifreeze, vehicle batteries and yard trimmings.

Expanding the opportunities to recycle in Helena would lead to more recycling. The consultants estimated that the curbside service would increase Helena's reycling rate by half.

We would encourage the city to take a serious look at finding ways to make the investment in recycling.

As the consultants pointed out, recycling brings benefits beyond the bottom line, among them saving energy, producing less pollution and conserving resources.

In Helena and other relatively rural areas right now, the chances of recycling making money for the city or even breaking even, are remote.

That's because the costs of hauling the materials to a company that can handle large-scale commercial recycling is so high.

The closest to Helena is in Spokane, Wash.

The economics of trucking loads of light plastics such long distances make that problem even more apparent.

And it goes a long way toward explaining why the recycling study found that the volunteer efforts of SAVE and Growing Friends of Helena are being overwhelmed with plastic.

Also, appropriate sites for landfills are readily available compared to more metropolitan areas in the country.

It would be a good time for some entrepreneurs to take a look at the growing demand and think about starting a larger-scale recycling business in the state.